Wait, you knew that? Why didn't you say?
The fact only one person holds never comes up
Groups spend most of their time on what everyone already knows. A fact only one person holds gets mentioned less, repeated less, and discounted when it cuts against the option people already like. This can happen even in psychologically safe groups; shared information naturally gets more airtime than information held by only one person.
- The discussion circles the same facts that were in the deck.
- People state their preferences before anyone shares information.
- A key fact surfaces after the decision is made.
Who: you, in the next decision meeting on this workflow. Look at: each fact that only one person brought up. Count: how many got discussed a second time, and whether any changed the outcome. You're probably looking at this pattern if unique facts were mentioned once and dropped. Probably not if the group picked up on them and they shaped the decision.
No safe way to disagree. In that pattern, people know a fact matters and choose not to say it. In this pattern, they say it once and the group moves past it.
Go around the room once and ask, "What do you know about this that you think the rest of us don't?"
Have everyone write their answer privately, then compare.
Across 65 studies, groups discussed far more of the information everyone shared than information only one member held, and were about eight times less likely to find the right answer when the key facts were split among members (Lu, Yuan, and McLeod, 2012). Established, though nearly all of it comes from laboratory studies.